Week 2 Relfection As I worked through case studies and Hammond’s continuing argument for an overhual in American education, I was struck by a theme of diversity. In case studies of schools with successful technology integration, I noticed how each school had a different model and how different teachers structured their technology use differently. As I read Hammond’s examples of adequate and equitable funding used well, I noticed that each country highlighted had significant structural and cultural differences in education.
In the case studies, it always seemed that there was a “fire-starter.” There was always a teacher or administrator or even a student who believed in what they were doing enough to overcome the obstacles of implementing their particular flavor of technology. While there are plenty of education companies and services that claim to have a mountain of research backing their approach, I do not feel like that affirming research is what is getting things started in the classroom. Technology can be difficult to acquire and can be easy to misuse. The problem is not simply financial. If it was, California would have significantly better results from its system of education. What makes a practice effective is passion and hard work. Setting up a Maker Movement or re-vamping lessons to utilize technology skills or burning the midnight oil to create podcasts for students are all things that likely go above and beyond contract requirements and hours. Technology is an educational resource with potential in the same way that PBL is a teaching method with potential. Issues of workforce, culture, equity, and community all play a large hand in educational success. Moving onto the countries, Hammond identifies Singapore, Finland and Korea as countries who have succeeded in the long and grueling process of education reform. Interestingly, each country has distinct qualities. In Korea, there is a strong culture of respect towards the teaching profession. In Singapore, education is viewed as a utilization of a great natural resource, the people of Singapore! Finland has a clear social focus on education. Even with all these different perspectives on education, all three countries find success. This again reinforces the idea of diversity in education to me. It is an “all roads lead to Rome” kind of feeling. There is no single right way to build an education system or approach pedagogy and an education system can become so much more than the sum of its parts. While all the case studies and countries examined had qualities that made them unique, they also had much in common. All the success stories I read about had a focus on the role of the teacher. The teaching profession was elevated in terms or respect or at the very least elevated above a burnt out babysitter waiting for retirement. Teachers hold respect, have social responsibility, and are constantly incentivized to improve. Teachers are also equipped to successfully fill those responsibilities and exceed those expectations. Teachers in these areas were well informed with relevant data and ample time to receive professional learning on the implications of that data. In terms of funding, the money was spent equitably and there was enough to meet the needs of a basic education. To a Californian like me, that sounds like a pipe dream but these examples show it is possible. I feel like an important concept here is the idea of what constitutes a basic education. Is education a compulsory experience that frees parents up to work or a system designed to build up those who will build the future? Ultimately, I do not know how to address the issues with our current system. The process, when successful, has been long term and racked with hardship and I wonder if our modern society has the patience and faith in the system to hang on long enough for that change to happen before tearing the system down yet again. To me, it is similar to the idea of America converting to the metric system. The government has tried to prime the pump before, but it never sticks. There is a cycle there. Adults never learn to use metric, unless their chosen career demands it. Children never learn because adults never teach it to them well enough to learn it. Those children become the adults who never use metric and then never teach metric to the next generation. The perpetuating idea in that cycle is that converting to the metric system is not worth the trouble. I sincerely hope that education is not trapped in a similar cycle. What can be done though? I can focus on my practice and my school site. The case studies of American schools prove that passionate and motivated communities can make a difference. I can show genuine care for my students. I can work to instill a growth mindset and 21st century skills in the students I have contact with. I can collaborate with my peers and try to build a team committed to making improvements in our sphere of influence. Maybe with enough small pockets of educators stepping up, the ripple effect will be large enough to spark the change needed to repair our education system.
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Below are three case studies. These cases have been pulled from Edutopia’s “Schools that Work” series. Each one focuses on a different American school and what they are doing to find success. All three focus on some sort of technology implementation model. The Maker Movement - Edutopia
This case study focuses on the Maker Movement, an organization dedicated to promoting the idea that in culture of consumers and users students can be makers. Students become makers by creating their own products via 3-D printing, robotics, coding or other physical production methods. I chose to examine this case of classroom technology because another teacher at my site has been telling me about grant opportunities with the Maker Movement. In this case, a student who was passionate about being a Maker brought the technology to his school. He attended a board meeting to pitch the idea of incorporating the movement into the classroom. Once in the classroom, students can create their own products while making connections to math and science concepts along the way. The style of learning promotes questions and is driven by the needs of the students. While this technology use certainly motivates students to learn and has them apply concepts in a real world setting, it is still unclear what kind of pedagogical impact it has on content delivery. How does using a computer software to convert a 3-D model into (X,Y,Z) coordinates help a student learn about the coordinate plane or three dimensional geometry? It provides a strong visual, but I do not see yet how it helps students learn initially. However, students being excited or motivated to learn the content as a means to completing their creations is reason enough to look into the Maker Movement. As far as implementing in the classroom, the required equipment to make it real is expensive. However, there are definitely grant opportunities out there. There are plenty of organizations and individuals who want to make great things happen for students. One thing that is clear though, is that the Maker Movement is, as of now, a passion project for many. It takes significant work and set up to successfully implement after securing the funding necessary. Quin’s school has Makers because of Quin’s passion for the technology. Ultimately, this is a successful use of technology when implemented by a teacher and school site who believe in it’s potential. Otherwise, it becomes a high-tech shop class. Tech Literacy through Content Learning - Edutopia This case stuck out to me because tech literacy is something I have wanted to improve in my own classroom. Our students are fairly tech savvy. They use technology daily in the classroom and use Google apps on the majority of their assignments. One app that is underused in my opinion is the Google Spreadsheet. I am always looking for opportunities to show the wide variety of uses a spreadsheet has and develop those skills in students. They are marketable skills and allow opportunities to tie in financial literacy. However, I am always wary of doing technology literacy for the sake of technology literacy. So, I was excited to see how they blend it with the content. The school in this case uses a technology teacher and classroom to partner with the core content teacher to enhance projects and lessons. The technology teacher coordinates with teachers to plan what technology skills to teach. The idea is to use technology as a tool to help students express their learning in different ways. They apply the SAMR model for different levels of tech integration:
Obviously, there is merit to all four levels. Even in substitution, the addition of technology literacy makes the lesson richer, as long as content is not lost in the process. If a teacher needs to choose between Lesson X content or Lesson X content + technology skills, it seems apparent which choice provides more for students. What is essential is that content is still the main focus of the lesson. In the video, you can see that the technology teacher is familiar with the content and relating it to the technology. He scaffolds students through story-building strategies and shows them how they can use technology to enhance their storytelling. The examples here give a lot of insight into what strong technology use looks like in an educational setting. Technology is not a means to an end, it is a way to enhance learning and provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning in meaningful ways. This case study definitely encourages me to take greater advantage of our own technology resources on my campus. Blended Learning Case Study - Edutopia This case interested me because I have noticed that technology can sometimes be a distraction to students and can water down the content students interact with. While I strongly advocate for students to use appropriate tools, sometimes I feel as though online learning is not always the best option for students. This case study highlighted several teachers at a school who apply blended learning in the classrooms. These teachers take advantage of technology to provide students with choice and autonomy, Students can view learning resources anytime when outside of the classroom. Blended learning helps contribute to effective differentiation. Teachers can run multiple groups in a classroom and make their presence felt simultaneously via prepared materials like podcasts. It certainly speaks to the efficiency of well-prepared blended learning. This model has been shown to be effective. Students testify that they feel they learn more with the technology use. Test results show students performing at the highest level. The school makes a strong case for blended learning. What I felt was most interesting about this case was that different teachers approached blended learning differently. The biology teacher had a different structure in her room than the math teacher. One staff member mentioned that blended learning works when you make it work. Teachers cannot just copy successful models, in the same way that students do not learn by copying each other. A teacher needs to design their own structures to meet their own goals in a way they believe in. Technology is not some magic pill for increasing test scores. It is not an easy answer to struggling schools issues. When looking on a global scale, different countries with drastically different education systems can find success with students. What makes a system effective is the teachers and administrators driving the system. Blended learning is full of potential, but that’s it. Computers do not babysit students and magically teach them math. It needs to be adapted to a specific classroom, experimented with, and implemented with fidelity. This case study has encouraged me to keep experimenting with technology and find the structures and activity types that have the largest impact on my students. In a previous post, I discussed a potential driving question for research and discussed the value of that line of research. That question was “What influence does a growth mindset towards mathematics have on standardized test performance?” Now onto some Need to Knows and Next Steps. Need to Knows:
Realistically, there are many more need to knows for this question but those are the most crucial to me at the moment of writing this. I am particularly concerned with Need to Know #2. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher on growth mindsets, released commentary on growth mindset in Education Week after her work begin to receive a large amount of public attention. That commentary can be found here. One issue Dweck discusses is that growth mindsets have seemed to become the “right” thing to have in education and, as is when things become the “correct” thing to do, many educators and students have developed ‘false’ growth mindsets. So, being able to measure a genuine growth mindset is crucial to the success of this research. It is also crucial that I can be sure that growth mindset encompasses mathematics. I believe that many pieces of our culture lend themselves naturally to a growth mindset. We, as a culture, tend to accept that in order to improve in sports and music you need to practice. We accept that those are areas where natural talent can take you far but hard work and experimentation also lead to greatness. In contrast, mathematics has a heavy stigma attached to it. Even people who do not consider themselves athletic can go to a gym and improve their physical health. I do not believe many people have the same attitude towards mathematics. The last large concern I have is Need to Know #5. How ethical is it to use a control group in this research? There is an abundance of research suggesting growth mindsets are powerful and valuable. However, there are education systems in the world that outperform America that do not seem to emphasize a growth mindset with their practices. So, is it unethical for me not do the growth mindset scans and activities with a control group? Even if it is ethical as a researcher, it does bother me as an educator to withhold what I believe to be a good instructional practice from students. To wrap up, I currently believe my next steps to be:
Any thoughts or suggestions? Reading Reflection: The Flat World and Education Ch 1-3
If I were involved in developing education policy, this book would certainly make me squirm. In the first few chapters alone, there is damning evidence of how outdated and unequitable the American school system is and has become. As a math teacher, the effects of this antiquated system are abundantly clear. It is well known that the good ol’ U.S.A. outsources a large percentage of STEM-related jobs to other countries and, despite the ‘best efforts’ of the politicians controlling public educations, America has consistently been ranked in the 20’s for the last few decades. For Americans, the world is certainly becoming flat as opportunities to climb in STEM related fields are more and more being sent outside of our borders. As poor as the picture is when comparing America internationally, the issue becomes even more visible when you look internally. Literacy rates, standardized test scores, and discipline rates paint a vivid picture of how the color of your skin, the money in your pocket, and the state of your yard all influence your opportunities as a student. Those opportunities as student snowball their way into tremendous differences in higher education and career possibilities. For a nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal, our public education system seems to send quite the contrary message. One point Hammond makes that struck me is that the “politicization” of American education has has created this sort of pendulum effect on our systems of education. With power changes in the American government happening at least twice a decade, American education has been an evershifting landscape for the last few decades. Every President seems to feel the need to leave their fingerprint on the education system. This is evident when you speak with veteran teachers about Common Core. Regardless of their opinion, positive or negative, many will note its heavy similarity to the education system of the 1980s. As we shift from one educational perspective to the next, our country has slipped further and further behind. One unfortunate side-effect of our swinging educational ideologies is that we never really get to see the long term effects of a system. These systems are designed as k-12 systems. When we change systems midway through, it takes several years for the students in the middle to settle in. As unpleasant as No Child Left Behind was, we barely had it long enough for a single set of students to fully complete it. Common Core has only been around a few years but people are already clamoring to tear it down, we might not get to see a full set of students progress though the system, let alone several populations of fully Common Core educated students. Regardless of one’s opinion on any particular system, this is clearly a poor way to judge the effectiveness of that systems design. Good or bad, we seem prone to running from a system before it can set roots. So, I believe one of the first steps in fixing this problem is to establish consistency. Which may be hard, given the frequent shift of power in our country. This would benefit all stakeholders. Parents would remain familiar with classroom techniques. Any math teacher has heard a parent complain that math is no longer taught the same way it was when they were in school. Teachers would not need to stress re-learning their job every decade. Students would benefit from pedagogical strategies they learned in 2nd grade up in 12th grade. Consistency paves the way for educational acceleration. One important caveat, consistency is not stagnation. Education must continue to evolve with the changing world. We must instill 21st Century Skills and digital literacy in our students. We must do more than teach them to pass tests. We need to create lifelong learners with a passion for the future. As a teacher, much of this is over my head. I don’t control federal policy or state funding. What I can impact is the students in my classroom and the teachers I work with. For right now, that is a large enough task. |
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October 2017
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